Congress can't find their asteroids, no money for NASA

William Atkins
Thursday, 13 August 2009 19:23

Science - Space

If that money should come in the next year or so from the U.S. Congress, NASA does have the ability to complete its assigned task on time.

Specifically, the AP article relays information provided by NASA. It states, “NASA calculated that to spot the asteroids as required by law would mean spending about $800 million between now and 2020, either with a new ground-based telescope or a space observation system, Johnson said. If NASA got only $300 million it could find most asteroids bigger than 1,000 feet across, he said.”

AP concludes, “But so far NASA has gotten neither sum.”

For more information on Near-Earth Objects, check out the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Web site: The Near Earth Object Program.

Also, go to NASA JPL’s Asteroid Watch for much more information on Earth threatening asteroids.

To find out the potential risk from asteroids, go to the NASA Sentry Risk Table.

It states, “The following table lists potential future Earth impact events that the JPL Sentry System has detected based on currently available observations….”

The JPL Sentry System “… is a highly automated collision monitoring system that continually scans the most current asteroid catalog for possibilities of future impact with Earth over the next 100 years….”